Shakespeare: The godfather of modern medicine

时间：2019-03-01 08:14:02166网络整理admin

By Rowan Hooper (Image: Angus Greig) Epilepsy, psychiatric breakdown, sleep disorders – for all the crudity of 16th-century healthcare, Shakespeare’s observations still inspire doctors today EPILEPSY, psychiatric breakdown, sleep disorders… For all the crudity of 16th-century healthcare, there’s a surprising amount of modern medical detail in Shakespeare’s plays. The behaviours of some of his characters often bear a striking resemblance to how today’s doctors describe a range of neurological disorders, and his observations continue to inspire centuries after his death. One of those inspired was Sigmund Freud, who read Shakespeare as a child and quoted the plays in his works on psychoanalysis. “The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious,” Freud once said, which the literary critic Harold Bloom of Yale University thinks refers to Shakespeare. Indeed, Bloom contends that what we think of as the Freudian map of the mind is in fact Shakespeare’s. Freud’s interest in Shakespeare may have crystallised while he attended lectures by another medical pioneer, Jean-Martin Charcot. Charcot is known as the father of neurology, and his theories on neurosis and hysteria led Freud to move from neurology to psychology. He often used Shakespeare to illustrate the detailed observations of behaviour and character traits that are needed for diagnosis. That’s a lesson many neurologists still appreciate. “The art of medicine is strikingly similar to storytelling,” says neurologist Brandy Matthews at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. “No matter how amazing the technology that supports clinicians, nothing trumps a careful history and physical examination.” Following in Charcot’s footsteps, some neurologists, including Matthews,